


Loving to die

by StarOverHeaven



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Do not post to another site, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, no beta we die like l'manberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:01:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29082816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: Wilbur Soot has Hanahaki.Most believe it's incurable. That's not true. Hanahaki can be recovered from if the one you love dies.The only problem is; Wilbur can't kill a country.
Relationships: Past Wilbur Soot/Sally the Salmon
Comments: 6
Kudos: 47
Collections: Completed stories I've read





	1. To Love

Wilbur has been dying, is dying. He knows it like he knows the folding petals in his lungs and the way they bloom blue in the red he coughs into his fist. He knows it in the way he pulls at flowers blooming from his wrists and feels the roots sliding out from under his skin. He knows it in the way it doesn't hurt anymore. And that? That fucking pisses him off like nothing else. 

Once a long time ago, Sally told him he was doomed to die for love. When she was gone he'd wondered if that's what she meant, that empty grief that felt as though she'd taken a bite out of his heart before she'd gone. Now he knows better. 

Hanahaki was an incredibly rare disease, so much so that it was often spoken of like a legend. Flowers blooming made of love, deadly and more fatal than any cancer, incurable and creeping. Some cases took years, growing as deadly and silent as nature retaking a castle ruin. Other cases were quick - a rejection, and roots growing from eyes and blooms from the throat of some suffocated lovestruck idiot who died the same damn day. 

It was romanticized so heavily for something so terrible. Songs and stories, novels and whispers of soulmates and how being accepted after the roots began in your lungs was the only cure. The books with real information were hard to come by and rarer than anything, diaries of people long dead with dried petals between the pages. 

No matter how many books he found on it, collected and stored away in places nobody would find them, the cure was the same. Love, true and vibrant, or death. Whether it had to be the person diseased or the person they loved was unclear - death of one followed quickly after the other, most of the time. Hanahaki was incurable and usually quick, but sometimes it was longer - some journals had hundreds of pages before they ended, sudden and abrupt. 

At first he’d hoped it would be quick. Fast and easy, taking him while he slept or sat on those grassy hills with book and ink in hand, quill worn away at the tip. Maybe he’d die when he was with the others, just a simple quick outdraw of breath and silence as his heart stopped when the roots grew too deep. 

Wilbur wasn't lucky. It wasn't quick. It wasn't easy. Every breath had him vividly aware of the flutter of petals in his lungs, and his arms held root scars where he'd pulled bloom after bloom from under his skin covered in blood and ruined nerves the roots clung to. 

His tongue was so familiar with the taste of the regeneration potions that healed those damaged nerves that he'd begun to associate the taste with blood. Some days he would wake with the roots growing under the skin of his legs and he'd just… take a knife and _rip them out -_

The election was supposed to be an escape. One last chance to heal away the flowers, put them at bay just long enough to settle it all before he faded away one day. Before the cornflowers grow up his throat and spill from his lips in pearly petals of blue, and the roots finally dig so deep into his heart that it ceases to beat any longer. He thinks of the possibility that the others will find him in the morning with grief in their eyes regularly. He wonders often if they will miss him, when he goes. 

He hopes that it's a silent sort of leaving. He thinks about it often, maybe too often. Under a familiar tree by a familiar poppy, the red of it’s petals a reminder of his younger brother and the shine of his son's fur. Maybe he'll be playing a song, strumming for crickets as the night passes with gentle breezes against a familiar flag. Maybe he’ll sing, and his voice will fade away like the final chorus of a song forever unfinished, an anthem he had written with his own hands. 

They didn't know. Don't know. Never will, if he has anything to say about it. Not until it's too late and he's already gone. Maybe he'll go with a smile on his face and the wind in his hair, hands on an old guitar. Maybe he'll be buried there under that familiar old tree, only a memory of a founding father of a country of safety while his son strums that old guitar and sings an anthem to a new generation. 

The irony of cornflowers symbolizing hope does not pass his notice. It's hard to think of the stems that push through his veins as hopeful, and he finds the blue petals appearing at his wrist or pushing up from his skin a reminder of only loss. They bloom on his wrist the most, and beneath two hearts and a scar where one once was lays a raw scar of stretched pink skin that never seems to heal no matter how many potions he drinks. The petals always reopen it, and he always drives the wound deeper when he plucks them and pulls them out from under his skin, stem and roots and all. 

Wilbur thinks of hope, when the arrow pierces his chest. 

He forces Tommy to run ahead as the flame of the arrow catches on the petals in his lungs, and he does not scream as he burns from the inside. It isn't at all like he'd thought he'd go, yet somehow it seems so fitting. Safety ripped away, love a shadow haunting his lungs as flame beats it into ash. His peaceful ending, gone as the fire licks across the roots in his arms and burns the flowers of his love to ash. 

Wilbur wakes with petals and ash in his lungs and a song screaming in his head, and feels like a ghost as he finds his brother, reality a lie and his head empty. The hearts of his wrist are black marks, and he feels the weight of his remaining heart beat in his chest off-tune in his chest. He watches with grief as his son, _his son,_ rips away the walls he'd built to keep him safe. 

He sings, and the petals in his lungs sing with him on every breath. He can feel them fluttering when he breathes in, a constancy that is both grounding and a reminder. He feels the roots growing, but there is no pain. Just pressure as his body disregards the very thing that's killing it. 

Wilbur feels as though his heart is already dead. 

As reality sets in, he wishes it _was_. But only briefly, a second of usefulness that aches deeper than his very narrow. He isn't done here, yet. He's not alone. Tommy is here too, depending on him. Wilbur can't give in to the roots, the soft calling of the song in his heart. Not yet. 


	2. Nostalgia, the littest grief

Pogtopia is dark even on the best of days. The lanterns creak on chains that Wilbur had hung himself, the stairs whittled from stone dripping with water that leaks from the top of the cave. A bucket sits beneath one of the stalactites on the ceiling, and the plip of the water dripping into it allows him to keep track of the time without the sun or a clock to help. 

It feels like the end of something. A dark crack in the world that felt like the one in his heart, and at the core of it a fire burned in those little lights like fire reflected in his eyes when he struck the flint against the steel. 

It’s here where the symptoms get worse. 

It starts off small. Bloodied petals on his hand when he coughs, nosebleeds that come and go with no warning or reason. Sometimes he has to stop when he's going up and down stairs due to random bouts of vertigo - he gets used to walking with a limp. His appetite fades, and his wounds take longer and longer to heal. 

There’s no regeneration potions here, and he doesn’t have the facilities or the will to go through the effort to make them. His hands shake with pain he doesn’t feel anymore, and the cold seeps into his bones despite the coat he wears. Blood dries on his arms under bandages he forgets to change, wrapped too tightly around his arms and hands. 

There’s a war brewing, soon. Wilbur’s hands are stained in gunpowder and sand and his lungs feel so, so full. The petals are thick and bloody, and when he swallows he can feel them tickle the back of his throat. His gag reflex always pushes at his whole body like a spasming when he does, and he’d spent hours this morning as his throat tried to cough up the flowers growing through his flesh. 

The exhaustion and ache pulls at him as he meets Techno’s eyes from where he stands on a platform at the junction of the ravine. The other man watches him, his mask shining under the lanterns and the sword at his hip humming with enchantments. To Wilbur the sound of it is loud, even though to others they’d only hear it at the very edge of their hearing. 

Wilbur turns his head away. Techno doesn’t move, a silent presence that neither judges nor is a danger. Techno doesn’t know Wilbur’s already dying, but the loyalty that he’s shown to Wilbur in the revolution warms his heart anyway. One of the few who hasn’t doubted him, who has instead _encouraged_ what Wilbur planned to do. 

The time passes. Wilbur’s flint and steel breaks halfway through the waiting, and he pulls a second from his pocket. Techno disappears, probably preparing even more. Wilbur has nothing more to prepare, the TNT lingering below L’manberg enough. He has no need for armor, no need for weapons - a simple diamond sword is enough for him. 

The day comes quickly. He is swept into the excitement and the joy, the yells of eager soldiers. They are warriors, and his heart warms even as the wounds and rawness of the roots beneath his skin ache. His hands are steady when he lifts his sword, unenchanted and worn, and he watches his people gather. 

He can tell just from looking that they’re skilled. Tommy wields his sword with familiarity, fierce eyes disguised with jests and laughter. He watches Wilbur when he thinks his big brother isn’t looking, but Wilbur feels his eyes on him. Even Niki is armored, eyebrows furrowed with concern and potions in her hands. 

Wilbur can’t help but think of the beginning, the first revolution. Of loud voices echoed in a valley, of dark walls and bitter betrayals. His eyes shift to Eret’s tired face, then other faces who had never experienced war in this way. There were more this time. There were so many beside them, geared and with determination in their eyes. Even Eret, once a traitor and now a double crosser, stands beside Niki with tight lips and his eyebrows drawn over his eyes. 

“Tomorrow there’ll be more of us.” He murmurs into the sounds of voices, unheard by all. 

They are eager and vibrant, and when they are ambushed they are quick to retaliate despite the surprise. Dream has a perfect chance to kill him, when he pearls in. He doesn’t take it, even though he appears in a flurry of particles in front of Wilbur. They meet eyes, the tiniest moment. 

He has no arrows. He watches as Dream and his lackeys pearl away, but the damage is done. Instead of a pack of howling wolves the mood darkens to something fiercer, more anxiety and sharp teeth bared. The exasperation in Niki’s voice as she hands Wilbur arrows makes his lips tighten, but he doesn’t comment on it. 

Techno leads them to the Armory, the Vault, and some joy blooms in Wilbur’s chest at the sight of it. 

“We have the Blade!” Fundy cheers. 

_We have my brother,_ Wilbur thinks, and looks at Techno with a deep gratitude in his eyes. They aren’t, not really, but no matter Techno’s opinion Wilbur has always thought of him as something deeper than a friend. They had shed blood together years ago, and Techno had protected and taught him as Phil taught them both. They had grown up together, and no matter the years passed between those moments and this one Wilbur had always thought of Techno as a brother rather than Phil’s other student. 

He rejects the set of armor Techno offers him, but pulls a fresh blade from the chests. It hums against his fingers, the tiniest lick of flame at the edge of the blade, and he tightens his fingers on it until his fingers sting from the cut. Techno’s gaze is worried, and Wilbur deliberately doesn’t meet it as he steps out amongst the other Pogtopians. He is the only one who is armorless, only his coat as he goes with them. 

There is talk of traitors, and Wilbur suppresses the way his heart convulses in his chest and the grin that tries to pull his lips. _We’re all traitors,_ he doesn’t say. Still, it warms his tattered soul to hear Tommy’s cheers, to see the way Techno strides with purpose as they travel down the rails. The tower stands intimidatingly, an echo of a past, and Wilbur remembers the way Eret toiled to build it when Niki began her bakery. 

Then there are arrows, and no time for caution. 

Tommy bolts up the ladder, and beside him Wilbur sees Techno pour water on the floor and leap up when his trident lights up with Riptide and it hums in his hands with power. Wilbur laughs, taken by the pace of battle and the adrenaline in his blood. For a moment it’s easy to forget the way his lung are straining and the way his arms ache beneath his bandages, the way the skin of his legs pulls tight around the roots growing there as he climbs the ladder. 

Each time he pulls back on the string of his bow he can feel skin split on his arm. The bandages go red, and when an arrow catches his coat aflame it spreads to the blood-lined bandages unrepentantly. He pats it out furiously, stumbling back from the edge of the tower, and catches the golden apple Techno throws to him more out of instinct than because he was paying attention. 

He doesn’t bother to eat it, instead pushing himself back into the fray with eyes as dark as smoke and the smell of gunpowder on his cloak. Tommy leaps off the roof into the water below, his screams and yells over their communicators demanding and excited but _focused._

Tommy is a good soldier, fierce and determined with hands long-practiced in war. Even still, seeing him jump down to join the fight with the others has Wilbur’s heart leaping into his throat - and then Techno is jumping down with him, as fierce as an avenging god and with eyes as red as the blood on his blade. He goes with Tommy, a protective galeforce of gunpowder and fireworks and netherite enchanted to the limit. 

Relief trickles over Wilbur’s already wartorn heart, and determination reignites as he loads his bow and fires down to cover his brothers as they tear into the battlefield. 

Wilbur is one of the last to jump down, peering at the water below with tired eyes before he takes the plunge. The water’s cold as hell, but he doesn’t pause to think about it. Distantly, the sounds of voices over his communicator earpiece become shouts of _Dream, he’s invisible!_ and he thinks nothing as he draws his blade and jumps into the fray. 

He gives at least two people nasty wounds, and Karl flees into the trees clutching at his as Wilbur tracks him. There’s a thirst for blood in the adrenaline he feels, an eagerness that has reignited in the face of battle and war. It’s like the Revolution, but bloodier, stronger. They aren’t as weak, and they’ve got the scales tipped in their favor. 

He feels like a dragon, unstoppable with the warriors at his back and the fire in his heart. His lungs shiver with petals for every breath and the shadows track his footsteps, blood dripping down the blue of his blade and the enchantments humming against his fingers until his hands feel numb. He is a monster of flame and ash, and before him lay his people, his nation, his _hoard._ They’re all his. His to protect, his to cover with wings broken and wrong. To cover, the arrows flying from his bow into the fray as true as the arrow that one pierced his brother’s heart, the one that set him aflame. 

Wilbur remembers, distantly, his words to Tommy that night of exile. When they’d been shivering in a hole before they’d discovered Pogtopia, his tongue chilled and his heart shattered open like glass across stone. 

_“Tommy, I’m a long fuse.”_

A bonfire burns in his heart, and when his eyes meet Dream’s mask on that hill there’s a strange stillness. His lungs don’t move and his heart pulses in his chest, pushing adrenaline and blood and fuelling a craving in his teeth to sink in and _bite_ , some feral instinct to tear apart something like an animal. 

Then silence. Wilbur calls down the arms of his comrades and Dream does the same. They meet on even footing, the wood solid beneath their feet. Netherite surrounds them, glowing and dark as the basalt that lines the Nether. Two generals meeting, yet their goals are the same. It’s a facade of a war - injuries dealt, but no death. 

Tonight would be made of scars and memories. Wilbur would make sure his legacy was not born in the death of those he’d fought beside, regardless of their side. It wasn’t the point. 

His heart beats in his chest, and his veins are warm as blood flows over the stems that have grown inside them. His hands and feet are cold from lack of blood flow, and he doesn’t care. He hasn’t cared in a while. The same way he doesn’t care that he can feel the petals in his lungs creeping, the same way he doesn’t care that every breath is a little harder and pain ricochets through his body as regularly as a clock turns to signal the time. 

Schlatt is pitiful. Wilbur watches him die with empty eyes, some sort of primal beast inside him satisfied by the sight of his enemy so crippled. Some part of him wants Tommy to shoot him, to get it over with. Another side, darker and stained from days as a plaything to gods only Schlatt would remember, is far more satisfied to see Schlatt succumb to his own body. 

The roots under his skin grow with every beat of his heart. He can feel the petals beneath the tatters of the bandages around his arms, and tightens them. Dream looks at him, and Wilbur looks back. 

Nobody knows. Not even Dream. But these wounds, the bloodied bandages on his arms? They’d been there for far too long. Dream had noticed them, Wilbur knew - had seen them days before, when he’d delivered a bag with a forever smiling mask and Wilbur had greeted him warmly like an old friend, eyes feral and dark and _eager._

How ironic that Tommy hadn’t seemed to have noticed, when even Dream had. Tubbo had seen them, and looked away. Techno hadn’t noticed them, since they were buried under the sleeves of his coat - but Wilbur catches his eyes now, out of the corner of his own. Looking. There’s concern there, a furrowing of brows that gives Techno’s feeling away, and Wilbur carefully does not meet his eyes. 

The cheering is loud in his ears, a howling of victory and claiming. Tommy is shouting something, hands raised and fingers spread. His smile is wide, a grin that shows his braces. His face is spattered with blood, and there’s a scratch across his cheek that must hurt to smile with. Still, he smiles. He talks. 

Wilbur hears none of it. 

Schlatt’s body is twitching, and his mouth foams. Wilbur pulls the bandages around his wrist too tightly, and the frayed and burned cloth snaps at the end in his hand. He does not touch them again, letting his arm fall as he looks at the scrap in his hand. Blood drips from his fingertips from beneath his sleeve by his side. 

Techno’s eyes sharpen across the room, honing on it. He knows the scent of blood as he knows the scent of war, of gunpowder and the stink of zombie flesh, ~~as he knows the smell of Phil’s feather dander when he sheds thick in the spring and gets it all absolutely fucking everywhere~~ \- blood smells sharp and tangy, copper and iron and thick when it’s on his hands. He knows blood. He knows it like he knows his own. It’s obvious to him in a way that it isn’t, to everyone else. 

Wilbur’s blood doesn’t _smell right._ It smells of rot, some underlying floral monstrosity that makes Techno vividly aware of every drop. It cuts through the smell of everyone else’s like a ship’s ram through ice, like a netherite blade through paper. 

Wilbur’s sudden aversion to meeting his eyes recently suddenly makes sense. The eager mania in his eyes when he spoke to Techno offhandedly about his preparations for the war effort. The strangeness to his gait, some sort of stiffness that Techno had passed off as sprained ankles from going down the stairwell a bit too fast again. 

He’s dying. 

Wilbur smells of _death,_ of something left to decay for too long. Something forgotten in an unreachable place until the insides go gooey and it sinks through the skin and the smell permeates the house. Anxiety sharpens in Techno’s belly, like hunger but twenty times worth. Fundy realizes the same thing, a darkness in his eyes that tells Techno that Wilbur’s son has also noticed the scent. But unlike Techno, Fundy isn’t practiced - he’s sniffing subtly, but the way he’s looking around gives away that Fundy doesn’t know _whose blood_ smells off. 

Techno doesn’t say anything. He thinks of Phil, warm wings and crooked smiles when Techno’d told him he was going off to meet up with Phil’s boys, to see Wilbur after nearly half a decade of having not seen the other man at all. Wanderlust ran in the family, and Techno hadn’t been surprised that Phil’s youngest had followed Wilbur when he went out that door. 

Tommy had always idolized them both, but Wilbur had been warmer. Techno was the cold edge of a blade on a winter night, muscle and bloodlust wrapped into a familiar form. He’d never called them brothers, not really - Phil had understood, never pointing out when Techno would slip and call Wilbur or Tommy his brothers, when he’d refer to Phil as ‘dad’ during a stressful situation or even as a playful joke that made his ears go warm after the words left his lips. 

Wilbur had told him he would always be his brother anyway, the day that he’d left. The words rang in his head like an echo. _“You’ll always be my brother, Tech. Maybe not in blood, but in spirit. I’ll keep Toms safe, you keep Phil safe. Fair?”_

_“Fair.”_ _Techno had said, a promise more than any words could ever say. Wilbur had smiled at him, and Techno had watched them both leave that night. The next morning, he’d mounted his horse with Phil at his side, and they’d disappeared into the rising sun._

He tries to think of what he’s going to tell Phil, after today. The letters he’d sent the other man would arrive soon - Phil was fast on his wings, but Techno didn’t know if he’d be fast enough. He didn’t know what was taking Wilbur, hadn’t known he was sick - and it was too late, now. 

Wilbur doesn’t look at him, and Techno doesn’t try to get his attention. The once-president grins as he sends Tommy up to the podium to give them all a speech, but the joy there is thin and strained. His posture is off, all his weight put to one side and his other leg eerily still. His right hand is covered in blood, dripping from somewhere up his arm. 

Niki looks at him with concern, and Wilbur doesn’t meet her eyes, watching Tommy. 

Wilbur tenses when Tommy calls him up. There’s exhaustion creeping into his bones with every step he takes up to the podium, and when he stands there he feels the vines spreading under the skin of his back towards his spine like a man feels a noose circling his neck. There’s passion in his voice as he declares L’manbergs flag to be hoisted, instead of the monstrosity of Manburg. 

But… His passion is faded, a ragged thing. He doesn’t have much time, and he doesn’t want to push himself to care for L’manberg when there’s nothing left of him to give her. His unfinished symphony, his neverending song that carves into his bones like a wolf’s teeth. 

There’s warmth in his words when he asks Tubbo up to the stage. A smile, gentle and crooked and familiar. 

“You’re a good kid.” Wilbur says, and the words are true. “And an even better spy.” He adds, though this is not so true - but seeing the way Tubbo brightens at the words makes his smile a little more real, a little more genuine. Warmth pools in his heart, and he pulls his hand from Tubbo’s shoulder before the kid can feel how much it’s shaking. 

The crowd is alive, celebrating. It’s trivially easy so lip away from everyone, to duck under the broken fence and loop around to the back of the podium. 

(Techno watches him go with tightened lips, and thoughts of explosives and the madness that has taken Wilbur and turned all his light and warmth into a supernova so bright he’d burnt himself to ash on it. He thinks of the wither skulls in his enderchest, and what the government had done to his brother. Wilbur is a shell of a person, sick and dying and fighting wars instead of living peacefully in the nation he’d once led. Maybe if this hadn’t happened, Wilbur could have been cured - the sickness would have been caught, and he would have lived to see Tommy and Tubbo grow up, to see his own son grow up. Maybe in another world, Wilbur could have been happy. 

Manburg is a rotten thing of what his brothers had told him L’manberg had been - a nation of the free, of a place free of tyranny. It’s a twisted parody of everything that Wilbur had said he’d loved, in those letters he’d sent Techno and Phil once a long time ago. A letter that spoke of happiness, of his son and the safety of walls and how Tommy had grown so much yet suffered so dearly to do so. Letters that reeked of guilt but never spoke of it, ink drops in the corners from how Wilbur had lingered as he tried to think of the words he’d wanted to say on a letter that didn’t have enough space for him to say them all. 

That Wilbur is gone, now. In his place is Wilbur, still, but Techno can barely see the tattered edges of the man he’d once known. 

He looks at the thing of grief and anger and madness that has replaced his brother. Looks at Tommy, looks at Tubbo. He thinks of governments long past and gone, and the way they’d twisted people he once knew into facsimiles of themselves with crooked, feral smiles and greed in their eyes. Thinks of the feral thing that L’manberg had turned his brother into, the child soldiers Tommy and Tubbo had become. 

Techno is done with governments, and he isn’t about to let the cycle begin again. 

He won’t let it happen again. He won’t let it do to these kids what it’s done to Wilbur, who was rotting from the inside, who threw himself into battle with no armor and empty eyes, who showed no signs of life, of wanting to live. 

It will not happen again.) 

The button room is familiar. It’s the heart of her, this place - a core beneath a podium that Tubbo had built. But if this is L’manbergs heart, L’mantree is her soul. She’ll live on, in those warm and caring eyes of his little brother and his friends. She’ll live on in Wilbur’s son, like the way Sally’s memories do in Wilbur’s head. 

He thinks of Fundy’s red hair, and then of Sally’s. Warm and red like gentle flames, passionate and shining in the light of sunrises and sunsets like the feathers of a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

Wilbur has been here far too many times. Even standing there makes him feel the gunpowder on his fingertips, the rawness of skin brushed by too much sand. Hours spent lacing L’manbergs core with TNT like the most terrible kind of love. His heart beats in his chest and it feels like it’s pushing through bedrock to do so, some sort of slow and painful spasm as it catches and hitches. 

His lungs are so, so full. He can feel the roots in his back, coiled around his ribs. His arms are marked with roots and stems, petals peeking through his skin like thorns of blue. The bandages he’d wrapped them in are ragged and bloody, burnt and ruined. He touches them gently, looking at the blue that shines in the holes of the cloth. 

It’s like greeting an old friend. 

His head rushes, adrenaline and terror. He’s so, so afraid. He doesn’t want to die alone, broken and rotten inside as his own love consumes him from the inside like the jaws of a hungry animal as it chews him up into a pulp. His lips are moving, but his thoughts are faster than he can keep up with. 

It’s not the same, will never be the same. His love is endless, but to be such a thing it pulls from him. It pulls and pulls and pulls, and he’s out of tinder to feed the roaring flames of it. It peels flesh away, swallows his blood hungrily with roots until his hands shake. Consumes his stomach and arteries, claims his veins, pushes itself through muscle like he’s made of dirt and not flesh. 

His love claims his body as fertilizer for it’s flame, and he _lives._ He lives through it, for it, with it as it eats away at him like a parasite. It consumes him, each petal vibrant and blue as it chokes him like a disease until his throat is sore and his eyes are empty of fluids. He is always tired, unable to eat and struggling against the pain of existence to live. 

He isn’t gone yet, isn’t done yet. He just has to end it. Cancel the cycle before it begins, a common enemy - they will hate him, and it will be good because they’ll be too busy hating him to miss him. 

He just has to press it. His hand shakes, as he reaches - 

“What are you doing.” 

Wilbur’s heart stutters in his chest, and he swallows petals back down his throat. His hand pulls back despite himself, and suddenly he feels _alive,_ fearful and yet grateful. He won’t die alone - 

Phil is in danger. 

His lungs constrict tightly around a hundred thousand petals. He turns, then realizes dimly that Phil isn’ there, not yet. But he’s close. Close enough to connect to a channel over a communicator with ease, without the crackle and delay of distance. 

“Phil? Phil, where are you?” Wilbur asks, glancing around the room behind him like his father was going to materialize abruptly somewhere in the corners. 

“I’m on my way right now. What are you doing?” 

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Wilbur lied, and part of him is sickened at how easy it is to pretend to be happy, to be _celebrating_ , as he turns away. The button sits there, tempting and judging all at once, and he swallows thickly at the petals clogging his throat. “We just made Tubbo president. We - we um - we won! We won the war, Schlatt’s dead, Schlatt’s gone, Schlatt’s gone, Phil, so it’s - “ 

“Uhhuh.” Phil interrupts, doubting, and Wilbur falters. 

“It’s - It’s good.” Wilbur tried, and his voice was slightly too hesitant, cracking under pressure. 

“You are… where exactly now?” Phil asked, and Wilbur could picture his eyebrow raised just from the sound of his voice. Wilbur’s anxiety spiked as he looked away from the entrance of the tunnel. He didn’t - He didn’t want Phil to see. To see him like this, dying and desperate as a wilting flower reaching for rain that wouldn’t be able to save it. 

“In… L’mmmanberg - sort of - the area - you wouldn’t know it, I don’t think you’ve been here, but it’s the area around L’manberg - It’s, It’s complicated, geography and all that you know, it’s it’s - '' Wilbur rambled, desperate and struggling. Does he want Phil here? Does he want to feel the warmth of his father, knowing he’ll die, knowing he’ll be... “It’s geography and stuff! - “ He chirps, voice cracking slightly. 

He turned, a laugh on his lips, only to freeze. 

His father stood behind him in the dark of the passageway, eyebrows drawn and something in his gaze that Wilbur couldn’t identify. His wings block the light, dark gray with white-tipped feathers, and the nostalgia that slams into Wilbur’s chest is almost painful. Even from this distance he swears he can feel the warmth of feathers, smell the scent of _bird fluff_ and his _father_ and his tear ducts ache for their lack of tears. 

“Phil?” Wilbur asks, and his voice warbles nervously. 

“Mhmm.” Phil agrees, wings tightening against his back. Wilbur swallows. 

“Uh - “ Wilbur choked, struggling. There were so many words he wanted to say, but all of them caught on his teeth, on his throat and tongue like a poison, and so none of them came out. How much he had missed his father, how he had needed him so desperately - yet he could say none of it, his throat tightening with a choking sensation as petals tried to crawl up and spill from his lips. 

“Yeah. In L’manberg, you said.” Phil says, and his eyebrow raises, his stance shifts as he moves his weight to one side and it’s just… _judging dad pose._ Laughter clogs in his throat on the tight knot of emotion there, all of it a jumbled mess. 

“This is L’man - “ Wilbur began, then swallowed, interrupting himself. “I… will admit… Do you know what this button is?” He asked, hoping that Phil didn’t if only to soothe his own mind, yet also hoping so that his father could stop him, could help him like he was a child again. Could wrap him up until his lungs finally gave in and his heart stilled, so Wilbur wouldn’t be alone. 

“Uhhuh. I do.” Phil replied, eyebrow raising even further. He looked so… _unimpressed. ~~Worried.~~_ Wil swallowed some sort of vague grief that built in the back of his throat. 

“Have you heard the - the song on the walls before? Have you heard the song?” Wilbur asked, knowing he hadn’t but hoping anyway as he met his father’s eyes, then looked away. “I was just saying... I made this big point, and it was poignant, and it was that there _was_ a special place but it’s - it’s not there anymore, you know, it’s not -” 

“It is there. You’ve just won it back, Wil.” Phil said, the nickname familiar and old and his eyes so soft and Wilbur just wanted him to stop _looking at him like that -_

He turned away, ignoring the tears that were beginning in the corner of his eyes as he clutched at his head, It hurt to cry, dehydration and the lack of fluids aching in his veins as the disease creeping through his body sucked his blood away and consumed his flesh as it carved through him. 

_“Phil,_ I’m always _so close_ to pressing this button, Phil, I have been herelike _-_ seven or eight timesI have been here- _!”_ He shouted, closing his eyes tight as he imagined the button room, clean and empty, and then the hours he’d spent carving and scratching across the walls like a rabid animal as he tried to push his thoughts out of his head. “Seven or eight times.” He repeated, quieter, as his father sighed behind him. 

“Phil I’ve… been here so many times.” Wilbur admitted brokenly. He could hear the clang of metal and something far above them slamming into the ground, and a scream that sounded vaguely like… It didn’t matter. “They’re fighting.” He said blankly. Some part of him knew it would become this again, that it would all repeat over and over. “They’re fighting.” He repeated, stronger. _Again._

Warm arms pulled him close and he was enveloped in an embrace. He pressed his face into a warm shoulder, inhaling the familiar scent and clinging tight. Phil was _warm,_ and the heat he provided made Wilbur’s hands a little less shaky. The lack of blood flow had fucked up his temperatures like nothing else, and he could never seem to get warm anymore. He soaked up the heat like a sponge, desperate and rotting away, and wished he could cry and sob if only so the ache of the emotions stopped getting clogged in his throat. 

“And you want to just blow it all up?” Phil asked, understanding. His words were warm but tired, and his heart constricted in his chest. Phil understood - it was hardly the worst his children had done, but Wilbur… Wil had always been the stable one, a calm anchor in the chaos that both incited and limited the cacophony of madness that their family existed in. 

A failure. 

Wilbur hissed softly through his teeth, nodding sharply. “I do, I think. I...” He whispered, and his voice wavered. 

“You fought so hard to get this - this land back.” 

“I don’t even - “ “So hard.” Phil whispered, interrupting, and Wilbur knew he was looking at the burns on his coat, the scars he had gained since his father last saw him. 

“I don’t even know if the button works anymore, Phil, I could... Press it.” Wilbur stared at the button over his fathers shoulder, fingers twitching. 

“Do you really wanna take that risk?” Phil asked, laughing quietly into his shoulder. Wilbur didn’t respond for a second, fingers tightening in their hold on the back of Phil’s jacket. “There is a lot of TNT potentially connected to that button.” 

Wilbur smiled despite himself, despite the tears. _Eleven and a half stacks,_ he reminded himself. He shivered, and his fingers felt raw from the memory of sand. His shoulders had been sunburned, and he’d dranken fire resistance and regeneration pots that night to sooth the burns away as he plucked the roots from his limbs and tried to feel whole again. 

“Phil.” Wilbur said into the brief quiet, listening to the fireworks setting off above them, listening to the shouting and words muffled by the stone between them both and the war outside the walls. He heard Tubbo, for a moment, and swore he could hear Tommy shouting his name. 

He pulled away from the hug, backing up towards the button, eyes downcast. Phil watches him, lips tight. 

“There was a saying, Phil.” Wilbur told him, a smile ticking up the corner of his mouth. “By a traitor once part of L’manberg. A traitor - I don’t know if you’ve heard of Eret?” 

“Yeah.” Phil said quietly, watching him as Wilbur backed up further, towards his goal. 

“He had a saying, Phil.” Wilbur smiled. 

The button clicked under his hand. 

_“It was never meant to be.”_ He whispered over the hiss, his smile broad and happy. 

“Oh my god. You didn’t - “ Phil said, shock and terror in his eyes. Wilbur’s heart stilled in his chest, anticipation and something else inside him, and he wondered, very briefly, if the terror in those eyes was for _him,_ so close to the explosives like this. 

He had put a lot of it right behind the button for a reason. 

Then pain. His ears recovered from the ringing first, and he found strong wings around him, familiar arms protecting him as Phil covered him with his own body. Then, just as quickly, Phil pulled away, eyes wide as he surveyed the damage. 

“Wil! It’s all gone!” Phil whisper-shouted. 

_It’s gone._

Wilbur sighed, so softly, from behind his father. The relief was… endless. _It’s gone._

_There will be no more wars for L’manberg._

Wilbur smiled, standing from where he’d crumbled to the floor, outstretching his arms and basking in the _relief._ “My L’manberg, Phil!” He shouted, tears rolling down his cheeks. He didn’t know if they were from joy or grief, and didn’t bother to even try figuring it out. Both, maybe. “My L’manberg! My unfinished symphony, forever unfinished! If I can’t have this no one can, Phil!” 

_Just one more thing,_ he reminded himself, his own words torn from his throat bringing him back to himself ever so briefly. But briefly was all he needed to remember. 

“Phil, kill me.” Wilbur said into Phil’s shocked silence, pulling his own sword out and pushing it into his fathers hands. “Phil, murder me. Stab me with the sword. Do it!” He asked - no, _pleaded_ his father. He needed it to end. He needed it finished, and he didn’t… He wanted _mercy._ He didn’t want to be put into an obsidian box and left to die as his own body consumed him until he was nothing but a patch of cornflowers whose roots were locked to his own bones, dying from lack of sun and blood to flourish. 

“Look! They all want you to!” Wilbur said, gesturing to the shocked people who had been fighting before the TNT went off, now standing at the crater, bows still drawn and shields up. Tommy is staring up at them, eyes wide through the dust of the settling rubble. The thunder of explosions still continued, in the distance. “Do it Phil, kill me.” 

Phil choked on a laugh, tears at the corners of his eyes. “Phil, kill me - “ 

“I - You’re my son!” Phil shouted, eyes wide with a horror that Wilbur knew he would never forget. “No matter what - “ 

Wilbur wanted to scream. Wanted to plead and shout and take the sword and do it himself but - 

But he couldn’t. 

_Coward,_ his own thoughts whispered. And maybe he was. Maybe he was. But. “Phil!” He shouted, nearly screamed. “Look - Look! How much work went into this and it’s gone?!” 

There was silence for a moment as Phil stared out over the destruction, the rubble and blood and steel and bone and _pain -_ and when he looked back, Wilbur knew that Phil knew at least one of the reasons that Wilbur was asking. 

_If I live I will never forgive myself for this._

“Do it. _Please._ ” Wilbur said, no, _pleaded_ , and when Phil drew him into a hug and he felt the searing pain of the flame imbued blade sinking into his chest he did not scream. All Wilbur had to spare was a smile, pained and peaceful and - 

_Relieved._

Phil swallowed, choking a scream away. “You couldn’t just- you couldn’t just win.” He said, laughter pooling from his throat like he couldn’t help it, like he couldn’t stop it, and Wilbur felt the hot tears against his shoulder as Phil clung to him, burnt wings around them as though to hide him from the horrors outside this last embrace. 

Flowers pour from the wound, unnoticed by his father who sobs silently, shoulders shaking, into Wilbur’s shoulder. They bloom thick and heavy from his wrists, and the fire enchantment in the blade burns in a familiar way - but it doesn’t catch the flowers inside him alight. The intentions of the wielder of an enchanted blade matter, and Phil did not want him to feel agony. 

Phil granted him mercy. Quick and quiet, a slip of a blade into the chest as petals fell from the wound, blood dripping from the corner of Wilbur’s lips as petals crept up the back of his throat unimpeded. 

He closes his eyes and thinks of better days. Of rickety wooden docks and hummed songs, smooth cool scales against his fingertips as he greets Sally as the sun rises over the water. As he brushes her red hair gently, because she loved it when he did her hair up in braids. He’d told her so many stories of how he’d braid Techno’s hair, and she had always laughed when he spoke of his family. 

_“So strange, Wilbur.” She’d teased, and Wilbur would laugh and tell her another, a smile on his lips._

The nostalgia pools deep in his heart like the blood spilling from his lips. It’s a sort of grieving, nostalgia - a grief of days long gone and past. He thinks of warm fires and hot cocoa shared amongst his family when the cold seasons drew long and the rain turned to hail. Thinks of leaving long before, his guitar on his back and a smile on his lips. 

He thinks of the sea, and the lover it had taken from him. 

_Why couldn’t I have died to your love instead?_

He knows why, not that he wants to admit it. Sally was his love, the warmth of a home in an icy tundra, a ship on stormy seas. He’d loved her, he did - but she had loved the sea more. She couldn’t come with him, and he had accepted it with tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. She’d loved him, yes, she really had - but she wouldn’t ever be able to love him more than the sea. 

His life wasn’t a fairytale, and he was no monster who would take her from her home to feel her love warm his heart. They parted with songs on their lips and a kiss, grief in her eyes as she had disappeared into the sea and taken half of his heart with her. In a way it had killed him, and he knows she knew that as much as he did. 

He had stood at that dock, that pier, for a long time. Watched the sun fade over the horizon and sang, long and sad and mourning yet so _hopeful,_ and kept the warmth of her love in his heart to stoke the spark that lit his soul as he’d travelled away. Ever since he met her, he’d always loved the sea. 

Wilbur imagines the feeling of scales sliding against his fingertips, of warm rain and fast riverwater, and lets the hot warmth of his blood spill thick across the stone floor. He presses his nose into his father’s neck and lets his tears flood, bloodied and grieving as love ate him alive. 

Phil sobbed into his shoulder. Flowers spread beneath them, and Wilbur hummed. 

Nostalgia was a gentle sort of grief. 

Wilbur let his eyes open, eyes half-lidded, and they were blank. To him, all he saw was the sea - blackstone walls to his back, a flag waving in the wind and a stone dock, permanent and solid, as a bridge to the water. The sun rose over the waves, and distantly the part of him that hadn’t passed yet hears Tommy’s voice, grieving and loud, and he imagines instead that it is Tommy beside him, singing sea shanties and anthems and laughing as Tubbo chases Tommy across the docks when Tommy trips him. 

He imagines Fundy sitting at the edge, toes in the water and laughter in his voice as Sally tells him embarrassing things that Wilbur had once told her when he was feeling particularly lovesick. Imagines Phil standing at the top of the walls behind him, wings spread and a smile on his face as he enjoyed the sunlight warming his feathers. Techno spluttering as the wind catches Phil’s wing and sends feathers right in his face, complaining about it being too warm as Phil laughs and plucks feather fluff out of his hair. 

Niki snickering with Wilbur as they dip their toes in the waves and Tommy goes sprawling in the water as Tubbo tackles him into the waves, and Niki shrieking and joining in the playfight as Tommy deliberately gets her dress wet. 

Imagines the tears soaking into his coat and the warm hands holding him as he dies are just a hug of a reunion, and not one of a parting that they will never meet after. 

Wilbur fades, and there’s a relief to it that transcends living. The pain is gone. He no longer feels it as the flowers grow deep into his very being, destroying him as he destroys himself trying to end the sickness, end the cycle. His hands can be warm again, and his heart no longer feels so empty without the Hanahaki draining all of him away like water through a sieve. 

In a way, dying lets Wilbur live again. 

He thinks that’s pretty ironic, really. 

(A ghost with blood as blue as the flowers that would have inevitably killed him breathes, even though he doesn’t have to. He greets people with a smile, and part of him shatters even as he grows confused of how people avoid him, are shocked and scared of him. 

Ghostbur remembers loving L’manberg like he remembers dying. Slow, painful - but in the end so very happy. 

If the flowers grow in him still, and he never runs out of blue dye, and cornflowers grow in the button room and by his sewer - well. That’s for Ghostbur to know. 

They don’t need to worry about him. 

Ghosts can’t die twice, after all.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is no time for caution. there is no time for editing. i do not edit. what is editing? i only think sad thing, write sad thing, post sad thing at 3am and sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> i did not double check any spelling or grammar. it is 3am. i speedran this off an idea. i speedran both chapters. i will post both chapters. i will sleep.


End file.
